Fisher’s Wake

Today we listen to the echoes of new age, post-rock and prog. The reverb of decades crashing towards us in an endless wave; the tunnelling through of the 20th century, desperate to escape into the 21st. While the 21st, eager to understand its own, disturbing upbringing, embraces it.

Only These Echoes is taken from Mayerling’s new album, Roche. It’s an insistent, pulsing, mournful piece of music and it begins with a heavily modulated synth from the darker recesses of new age. The sort of sound you’d find on a particularly downbeat infomercial for enlightenment. Atop that, a simple, mournful melody repeats under a brief, almost spoken word vocal.

All this soon gives way to a looped pulsing synth rhythm which is swiftly joined by what sounds like a guitar pretending to be pan pipes whilst simultaneously sounding like the best bits from your Post-Rock favs. And by best bits I mean the most soul crushingly sad. As if the whole edifice is constructed to ape the naive optimism of the past while simultaneously charting its failure over time.

Roche is out on Hands in the Dark Records and you can get it right here.